I'll try to post major sci news items here and anyone else is welcome to post items too and to comment if you like. But let's keep comments brief here please.

Help: Revolutionary Superconductivity for Space Travel ETChttp://www.naturalphilosophy.org/site/volk/2016/04/02/athanassios-nassikas-crowd-funding-for-thrusterThis is reported by Greg Volk at the CNPS site. He says this is a novel superconducting levitation thruster technology and tests showed that the earlier version "can deliver 1000 times more thrust per unit mass than the Xenon ion propulsion engine that NASA has used to propel its Dawn spacecraft beyond Mars to Ceres". "[T]his novel device is able to accomplish its propulsion with absolutely no physical energy input. It just needs to be cooled to liquid nitrogen temperatures or below". The new version "is essentially a conically shaped superconducting coil and ... calculations indicate that it should develop over 30,000 times more thrust than [the] first version. Hence it should be able to lift heavy payloads off the ground." "[I]t should be capable of delivering 9 times more thrust, per unit thruster weight, than the Space Shuttle main engine". Also it should "be able to self-levitate off the ground" like the "hoverboard in the movie Back to the Future". So it should also be good for maglev here on Earth. The inventor is raising $32k online to do testing on the new version. See https://igg.me/at/levitation-thruster.

43Superconducting Levitation Thruster for Revolutionary TravelHere's more on the previous story from https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/supe ... -thruster#.Paul Laviolette says the superconducting levitation thruster [which I think requires no fuel] could make the following possible:- A "hoverboard" something like that depicted in the sci fi movie Back to the Future which the movie predicted would be in common circulation in 2015;- A scooter that could not only move forward, but hover and fly above the ground;- Cars that could take off vertically and fly through the air;- Thrusters that could produce shaft torque to generate pollution-free electricity;- Cruise ships that could levitate as in the movie The Fifth Element;- Space shuttles that could lift off the Earth without the help of rockets;- Interplanetary shuttles that could fly to Mars in 5 days, not 9 months as NASA currently has in mind;- Manned space ships that could attain near light speed velocities and travel to the nearest star system (e.g., Proxima Centauri) in 4.5 years, instead of 20,000 years.- This technology would be essentially pollutionless, requiring only the production of a small quantity of liquid nitrogen or liquid helium to make it work. Hence its carbon footprint would be virtually insignificant compared to the petrol guzzling technologies that are currently in use. [Nonetheless, "carbon footprints" are already insignificant and irrationally feared by global warming alarmists.]- Historically, social advances have been brought about by technologies that either improved transportation (moved people or goods more efficiently from one place to another) or improved on energy production. This technology should do both. If it works as expected, it would bring untold prosperity to the world.- See the demonstration videos at https://youtu.be/kJoVSpF9x64- and at https://youtu.be/EOcC7DddeTw.- The videos may not seem impressive, showing only a very small thruster causing a slight movement of a pendulum, but it should be scalable to much larger sizes.- Actually, travel to the nearest star would likely be much faster than 4.5 years, since the distances to most stars are apparently much closer than generally supposed. See http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=15374&start=225#p110714 for some details, such as 2 stars being less than 1/10th ly away and 7 more being less than 1 ly away.

Ron Howard Saw the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon Landing Faked In A Studiohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjNLcVbTXjk[I haven't read the article, but, if he did see something in a studio, it doesn't disprove the moon landings.]

HEALTH TECHA. 5. Humans Meld with MachinesB. 2. Paralyzed patients control robotic limbs using only their mindsThis seems to be a real advance.

PALEONTOLOGYA. 9. T. rex Bone Tissue DiscoveredB. 4. T. Rex Bone TissueThough they don't admit it, this finding undermines conventional dating, so dinosaurs likely existed only thousands of years ago, not millions of years ago, as found with C14 dating. See http://newgeology.us/presentation48.html .

TECHNOLOGYC. 5 Photosynthetic Protein in plants makes cheap hydrogen fuelE. 9. Water as FuelE. 5. Supercomputer doing a quadrillion operations per secondC. 10 Quantum Computer On A Single CPUE. 7. Loudspeakers made of Carbon NanotubesD. 2003 - Proof of Poincaré ConjectureD. 2012 - Photonic moleculesI don't know what the Poincaré Conjecture is, but the rest of these findings seem to be real advances.

CLIMATE HYPEA. 1. Glaciers Melting FastE. 8. 800,000-year high Greenhouse Gas LevelsThe climate was initially warm, then it got cold after the rapid continental drift event a few thousand years ago as explained at http://NewGeology.us , and since then it's been warming up gradually, so naturally glaciers will melt. The supposed 800,000-year high Greenhouse Gas Levels finding is surely false, based on false assumptions. They were probably higher a thousand years ago when the climate was warmer than now. Increasing temperatures cause CO2 and methane to be released into the air, causing higher concentrations.

MARSA. 3. Mars Surface Shows Signs of WaterB. 1. Mars Has Signs Of WaterD. 2015 - Traces of liquid water on MarsE. 1. Finding Ice On MarsHumans need to start colonizing space asap and any water on Mars would be helpful for that. It's possible that the water came from a Saturn nova flare a few thousand years ago, or from icy moons or asteroids that collided with Mars within that time.

MINOR PLANETSA. 10. Minor Planets Found Beyond PlutoB. 3. Eris Trumps PlutoD. 2016 - Near confirmation of Planet XPlanet X, a large planet, or small star, on a highly elliptical orbit around the Sun, is probably hype. The minor planets may be helpful for space travel to nearby stars, although there are engine designs that may make it possible to travel at nearly light speed, so journeys to nearby stars may not require long time periods, maybe just a few years. Many stars may be much closer than conventionally measured.

EXOPLANETSA. 6. Exoplanets Seen DirectlyC. 8 Earth-Like Planet Kepler-22bD. 2015 - Earth-like exoplanet Kepler 438bE. 3. Water and carbon dioxide on an exoplanetI'll have to check one of these days to see how close the nearest exoplanet may be, because that's where the first space exomission should aim for.

SPURIOUS PHYSICS & ASTRONOMYC. 7 Measuring The Universe With Black HolesD. 2016 - gravitational waves from a black hole mergerA. 8. Dark Matter's Existence Confirmed DirectlyB. 9. Dark MatterC. 2 Faster Than Light NeutrinosC. 3 Higgs BosonD. 2012 - Higgs bosonD. 2014 - Exotic hadronsMeasuring the universe is conventionally done with the redshift of light spectra, but it's based on the assumption that the object with the redshift is receding at a velocity and distance directly related to the redshift. However, it's likely that the objects with redshifts have bipolar jets and its the electrons in the near-side jets which are receding with redshift velocities. One high redshift object is visible in front of a low-redshift galaxy, therefore redshift doesn't measure the distance to the object, nor the velocity of the object, but only the velocity of the electrons in the near-side jets.- Black holes and gravitons do not exist in the ways conventionally theorized, so measuring the universe with black holes is doubtful, especially since it likely accepts conventional redshift assumptions.- Dark matter and dark energy don't exist, but they're assumed to account for the anomalous velocities of stars in the outer portions of galactic disks. However, the electrical force in Debye cells, i.e. ionized plasma cells in space, and the electric charge on stars already accounts for the anomalous velocities. See Charles Chandler's papers at qdl.scs-inc.us/?top=12692 .